Even JVT is sounding positive about vaccine roll out....

[MarcelineMissouri]

It’s behind a paywall but you can read enough to get the gist!
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hope-for-covid-vaccine-at-new-year-25b52b86s

the early vaccines are unlikely to limit transmission just reduce severe disease so it means we won’t magically be back to pre Covid days without other tools such as therapeutics/testing etc

I absolutely agree with this but I am still really looking forward to the day the vaccine starts rolling out. A vaccine that doesn't stop spread but significantly reduces the number of people severely affected would be brilliant. It will definitely help lots of people lead a more normal life. We can't get to a point where this virus kills no one anymore than we can stop flu killing people but flu doesn't drastically affect society.

It was either JVT or Jeremy Farrah, not sure which who said that once the elderly / very high risky and the frontline health / care workers have a vaccine (likely December / jan I think?), we should see a decent drop in hospital admissions / deaths etc - again, won't put everything back to normal but the threat level will feel better for everyone and the restrictions may lesson. All steps in the right direction to light at the end of the tunnel.

@Oaktree55

No one knows yet how well any of the vaccines will perform because we don't yet have the trial results.

Even if they "only" reduce severe disease that will almost certainly be sufficient to reduce or remove most if not all of the current restrictions in my view. We don't need to get to a place where no one has any chance at all of catching covid before that happens.

@Sunshinegirl82 my point related to your question. You said a vaccine will drive the R rate down. I was pointing out if it just limits severe disease but doesn’t affect transmission it won’t affect the R rate that’s all.

I think I read the efficacy for a Covid vaccine is set at 30%. Every step forward is a welcome addition but it won’t be like a measles vaccine.

Even a semi-OK vaccine that takes a while to roll out is great. We don't need anything like 100% protection. We need something that stops the most vulnerable people getting significantly ill.

What I am more interested in is this: New Zealand's stance is that they are keeping everything closed until there is a vaccine. But, as we are discussing here, "a vaccine" is not an either/or issue and probably won't provide anything close to perfect immunity. So at what point does NZ decide to open up again? My guess is that once they have blanketed their population in the first-generation vaccine, they will open their borders. But who knows?

My own stance would be that once the threat posed by COVID19 has been reduced to something that could be put within the range of "bad flu year," it's hard to make an ethical case for continuing with heavy restrictions (lockdowns, schools closures, closed borders etc.)

Testing will be the way out of this more than vaccines. It’ll become standard to have a rapid test along with showing passport at borders.

I think people over estimate what a vaccine will achieve particularly as take up won’t be high enough even if it was 90% effective not the 40/50% it’s likely to be.

Also don’t forget the Long Covid issue and other effects of this virus outside of “vulnerable” groups. The implications for healthcare costs are huge long term. Testing to suppress this virus will become the aim, in fact it is already not that U.K. is doing very well.

Do you have a source for the 40-50% figure please? I haven’t seen any numbers at all on likely efficacy and would be interested.

I think it'll be a bunch of things working together. Testing, vaccine(s) and therapeutics. I do however think that all this is going to create some awkward psychological dilemmas for countries which have controlled the virus strictly through stringent measures. Like, surely at some point they are going to HAVE to just throw their hands up and say "Look, everyone, the infection fatality rate is now low enough that we're going to have to treat it like flu" and then it will all feel a bit weird and anticlimactic.

I'm also looking forward to the endless fights and wrangling about vaccines coming up. Families and friends falling out because someone won't be vaccinated, employers trying to mandate it, employees refusing it, people getting cross because someone else is getting the vaccine and they think THEY should be getting it before them, etc. etc. etc.

Yes Kokeshi123 - how much good will a partially effective vaccine be in NZ for example? With absolutely no immunity within the population, the 2-week quarantine and border restrictions will have to stay. The wait to get the great majority of the population vaccinated with a highly effective vaccine could be long.

I’m really worried about having a vaccine so I hope it’s optional

www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/09/23/covid-19-vaccine-protocols-reveal-that-trials-are-designed-to-succeed/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

They can't keep their borders closed forever. They'll have to accept COVID19 at some point next year. Hopefully, however, the combination of better treatments and the vaccine plus natural evolution of the virus itself will ensure that it never becomes very lethal.

@Username198 they’d never make vaccination compulsory they may well make it an entry requirement for several countries once better vaccines come along akin to say Yellow Fever vaccination requirements for entry to some countries now.

Thank you Oaktree.

Oaktree, following on from the Forbes article- surely if X number are infected in the vaccine group cf to Y in the control group, if there is a significant difference between X and Y, that would indicate that the vaccine prevents infection. So, not just about preventing severe disease. Or are the trials not looking at that at all? Seems unlikely.

It’s not my area of expertise and I’m not qualified to comment. Just relaying what I’ve read as I find it interesting. Follow Florian Krammer on Twitter if you scroll back he did an excellent thread on vaccine candidates a few weeks ago.

Looking at another summary. The FDA has set the bar at 50% protection for approval of a vaccine, they define that as protection from symptomatic lab-confirmed COVID-19 infection. An effective vaccine will be considered as one that will reduce the number of infections in recipients by half.

So, sounds like they are looking at the trial results for protection against symptomatic COVID, as well as the efficacy in preventing more severe disease. Which seems reasonable.

@Kokeshi123

My own stance would be that once the threat posed by COVID19 has been reduced to something that could be put within the range of "bad flu year," it's hard to make an ethical case for continuing with heavy restrictions (lockdowns, schools closures, closed borders etc.)

This

Agreed Kokeshi and Ethel.

Surely it will be avaliable privately too for those not in at risk groups? I can see lots of companies paying to get there staff to have the vaccine

@Rosehip10

Surely it will be avaliable privately too for those not in at risk groups? I can see lots of companies paying to get there staff to have the vaccine

Where would the private companies get it from? Governments have already ordered hundreds of millions of doses before manufacture, I think private companies will have to join the end of a rather long queue.

Does anyone have insight into ordering system?

Eg can any country place an order and do you go to the front of the queue if you have a strong chance of developing your own?

Kind of a mutual agreement

Plus developing countries iirc wrt the WHO agreement

My personal view is that once a vaccine is rolled out people will abandon social distancing. The status quo isn't sustainable, there is already a fair amount of disengagement. I certainly don't think people will continue SD measures to protect people who opt not to be vaccinated.

I can see it being necessary to test negative prior to attending large scale events for a while.

The various webinars I've seen in the Oxford vaccine suggest they are hopeful that it will prevent, or at least reduce the likelihood of, infection. We will obviously know more soon.